Toogood Collection 004: Interview with Erica Toogood

Hearing Erica Toogood speak about fabrics and shapes is a truly inspiring experience that’s impossible to forget, or replicate elsewhere. An experienced pattern cutter and one-half of the Toogood brand, when asked to present her collection she turns into a storyteller, speaking about the textiles with a passion and poetry that I haven’t heard from other designers, perhaps because they were thinkers, rather than makers. She is both though it’s clearly the making that she prefers to discuss. “Incredibly robust felt,” “delicious silk” and “crispy, bulletproof cotton” - these are just a few of Erica’s favorite expressions that, as a journalist, I wish I had come up with myself.

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Now in its fourth season, Toogood is well nestled in their Paris showroom at rue des Arquebusiers. Still in Marais but far removed from the hustle of the district’s showrooms cluster, the serene, laid-back space is such a contrast to the tense atmosphere of other Parisian presentations that it’s hard to believe that business takes place there. But it does—the buyers have learned to appreciate the brand’s strong sartorial statements and keep coming back each season, and the Toogood sisters have embraced wearability a bit more by adding separates to their signature line of coats. What remains unchanged is what we love them for—the bulky but flattering shapes that transition from spring/summer to autumn/winter, the well thought-out details that infuse the pieces with meaning, and the innovative approach to manual work.

It’s refreshing and reassuring see a brand that chooses to withdraw its most recognizable design and ‘put it to sleep’ for a season in order to take the much needed distance; a brand that has the courage and self-confidence to actively oppose the pace that the fashion industry imposes on creators, demanding of many not 4 but 8 collections a year. They stick to their initial concept of doing one collection a year and change the textiles to adapt to the seasons. With such a density of ideas per square meter of fabric, they definitely can afford to continue working like this without stagnation ever crawling in.

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What is Toogood like for SS16?

E: This season Faye and I looked back and were very inspired by our grandma, who is not with us anymore, but she was an incredible seamstress and tailor. During the war, like so many women at that time, she made her underwear from parachute silk. We embraced that kind of make, do and mend idea of grabbing any kind of fabric, and that was the most luxurious silk that they made parachutes from. We’ve worked with putting the details nodding to the parachute into every single element within the collection, whether that be a small tab that you can see at the back of the trousers, or this kind of tubular string on tops. We have created a lot of new shapes this season, though we strongly believe in not reworking the collection every six months just to chase the fashion. Summer is our creation time when we have more time to create and so this season we’ve introduced quite a few new pieces, while also reworking the older ones. I’m very curious to see how these are going to transition for AW 16 into warmer fabrics.

There are a lot of transparent pieces in the collection. Is intimacy and underwear the overarching theme for this season?

E: Totally. Underwear as outerwear. Exposing yourself, but in a beautiful way, not in the kind of horrible way that people assume. Layering up. It is very beautiful when you put this see-through t-shirt over several layers underneath. You somehow manage to protect the inner layers. Faye’s concept for this season, because of the underwear reference from the parachutes, was looking at intimacy, the things you wear underneath, wearing underwear as outerwear, almost a kind of pajama reference, that kind of softness. I think in shapes while Faye visualizes in color, fabric, and the whole concept. She is able to take it that step further from the point of the toile and the pattern.

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Some pieces carry a Made in House label. What is it about?

E: Made in House is something that started last winter. We wanted to be able to slightly separate the main collection from these more extraordinary pieces that we can indulge. Faye wants to show her more experimentative side that we very much showed the first season. We wanted to have something a big more commercial so that people really can wear it, but then also have something that’s more like an art piece. They are limited edition pieces, so there will be literally only 10 of each made, and these will be made in our studio, in Old Street.

What pieces have the Made in House label?

E: The patchwork, the hand painted stripe and the tucked patchwork are all Made in House textiles. Painted linen, a very light cotton yarn, the cotton organdy, soft silk—this has all been hand dyed in our studio and then worked on. We have a small by incredible team. One person from the team that Faye works with paints on the textiles, and particularly on these Made in House pieces.

Does it mean that you now carry two lines?

E: In a very gentle way. We’re slightly ignoring the fact that we’re doing two lines. We do intend to have one continuous feel but realistically Faye will always want to experiment with fabrics, she’ll always want to push the boundaries. Giving it a limit of what we can actually physically do at our studio allows her to go wild and not think that we’ll have to make 300 pieces of this. And it makes it precious as well, which it is—it’s about innovation, moving forward, being more modern with it. And that’s how we feel about the shapes as well. Although inspired by work wear, it’s not a repetition of work wear, it’s more sculptural, it has a more modern feel about it rather than a kind of pastiche, retro feel.

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So the ‘main line’ has a stronger focus on wearability?

E: It definitely has to be wearable. You need to be able to work in your clothes and be up to perform your daily routine, so it's very important that nothing is uncomfortable and you have the room to move. The trousers I’m wearing are the Boxer in silk organza. They’re incredibly airy. But I can work all day, I have no worries, I don't feel too precious. If you feel comfortable you’re not disturbed in any way, you’re able to be much clearer, much more focused on your daily routine. It’s dreadful to think that clothing could hold you back from your creative work, or anything, whatever your work might be.

After the five collections, has a bestseller or a favorite emerged?

E: Totally. The Oil Rigger and the Beekeeper are probably the strongest. Also the Photographer jacket. We’ve had maybe 3 seasons with tops and trousers and probably we’ll move a bit more on those but it’s really about the coats and jackets. The beekeeper is quite iconic I think.

Is he with us this season?

E: He’s not here! [laughs] He and the Oil Rigger have taken this season off. We put them to bed for 6 months and then we’ll relook at them. I think it’s nice to take away a pattern and bring it back and re-energize in a different sense each time.

What dying techniques did you use this season?

E: For the main collection we have worked with a craftsman that has been doing garment dying for about 30-40 years. His experience is incredible, and he’s one of the very few in the UK that actually have this level of expertise on garment dying. So we put all of these fabrics – the cotton, the jersey, the organdy – together and he dyed it just according to eye, which is the most phenomenal thing to watch. We sent these huge 4 huge boxes: one was to be blue, one olive green, one cloudy grey, one black; and we just waited for a couple of weeks to see what happens. We specified the kind of color we wanted and I was amazed by how close he was able to get it. But it does mean that each fabric took the color completely differently. It’s an amazing process to see how the dye has reacted. The black is juts beautiful cause it's just slightly off.

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After all this work, what is it like to come to Paris and present the collection to the buyers?

R: When we come to Paris we can actually never guess which styles will be stronger. You have so little time for putting it all together, you come here and immediately within 24 hours you know the pieces that you and your clients are being drawn to. And you do a very brave edit form that point. It’s a funny process that I thought about today, when the designer becomes the retailer and the retailer becomes the buyer. We feel slightly strange being the retailers and doing the sales. But being in the fourth season now, we start seeing people come back and building relationships with the stores across the world. It’s wonderful to be around the people you only see twice a year for an hour and yet your relationship is very strong because you have so much connecting you.

What approach did you take to making the lookbook?

E: This season we photographed everything on our friends and family. These are the kind of people that we imagine wearing our clothes. We showed them a rail of 150 garments and everyone found at least one or two outfits that they felt comfortable enough to be shot in. It was wonderful to see them all come and be so supportive. They weren’t styled. Before the shoot we put people in color brackets but actually we didn’t even stick to that at the end of the day. It was quite an emotional day actually, much more than on a normal shoot with a colorama background and two models. We saw 30 people and tried on 4 outfits on each, and then when we looked at the rail at the end of the day and we saw that almost every singe piece was worn.

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How niche do you think your brand is?

E: I think that to put yourself on a map with other brands is very tricky. This is just what we want to wear and what we want our friends to wear, and it’s literally as simple as that. When we first started we made everything from just a simple cotton canvas, and then did the industrial rubbering, we did the foiling, we were making surfaces with dustbin bags that were heat pressed. It was a punchy start to Toogood. It was very strong, and we wanted it to be strong, we wanted that very simple love of shape and technique to come across, nothing else. Since then we've developed by increasing in the shirts, tops and trousers, even dresses and skirts for men and women. You can’t wear industrially rubbered trousers to work, and we do want people to be comfortable. It needed to become a bit more commercial, so we've evolved with the market, we've listened to our buyers, we’ve also worn it a lot more ourselves, and we just embraced this kind of evolving nature of the brand. So now we’re growing gently, we’re not growing at a crazy pace. It’s important for us to be able to still produce something that’s immaculate and send out exactly what people were seeing in the showroom.

What kind of growth are you interested in?

P: I think with any business when you grow there’s a moment when your eyes cannot be on everything, and that I think is a sad moment. Faye has had her studio now since 2007 and she has never been more than a dozen or so people. It’s always been in her control and gone through her hand. It’s important that we don’t necessarily grow too big. It’s not what we desire. There are some elements though that we’d love to be able to afford. We’d love to have a show. But then once you start, that’s it, you’ve set that ball rolling and each season the show is the thing. The budgets for these shows are mind-blowing and it obviously makes the small guys like us slightly out of the ring. Like always it makes you think about the smaller artisans and creators, how are they going to do it? I think not having the cash actually creates new ideas. This challenge is a good one. Obviously with the Faye Toogood team, with the architects, product designers, artists and sculptors that exist in the studio we have the capability for our language to not just be the clothes that hang on a rail, but also the rail, the chest next to the rail and the table, and even the glass that you’re drinking coffee from. The whole thing can be embraced, which is an incredibly exciting potential of the studio. So I know that Faye certainly is excited by the idea of how we can present this. That’s not necessarily a runway. But there are some ideas.

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Toogood is a British apparel brand founded by sisters Erica and Faye Toogood. With a focus on exquisite tailoring and hand painted prints, the brand is inspired by a modern reinterpretation of work wear. Now in the fifth season, Toogood has expanded from their signature outerwear into separates and accessories.